The mayor of the Big Apple takes a bite out of London

Our city is so hot right now Michael Bloomberg is expanding his empire here. But will the man himself move? Don’t tease us, pleads Nick Curtis

Thursday 14 February 2013 12:33 BST

p22 comp edition 14/02

Can there be a more old-fashioned, romantic gesture than asking your beloved to take your name? So it is with Michael Bloomberg, the 70-year-old billionaire and three-term mayor of New York, who is sprinkling his moniker liberally over London in a demonstration of his ongoing love affair with the capital.

First there’s Bloomberg Place, the 10-storey, £300 million HQ for his business and charitable endeavours designed by Foster + Partners at Walbrook Square, set to open in 2016. Rumours, though repeatedly denied, persist that Bloomberg wanted to rename Finsbury Square, where his offices currently sit, for himself: the new HQ will literally put his name on the London map. It will also provide further love-tokens for London: space for the public, £102,900 towards the upgrade of nearby Bank station, and a proper home for the much-abused Roman temple of Mithras on the site where it was originally discovered.

Then there’s the room to which Bloomberg has reportedly been given “naming rights” at the Serpentine Gallery’s new Zaha Hadid-designed space in the Kensington Gardens Magazine building — a reflection of his support for the Serpentine that began with a cheque for £250,000 and a seat on the board shortly after he met its director Julia Peyton-Jones in 1997.

Bloomberg’s name has been all over British institutions such as the Serpentine and the Old Vic Theatre since he first launched a charm offensive on the capital that year, to promote his autobiography, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. He has dispensed largesse to the Royal Court and the Tate, and indulged his passion for art at the White Cube gallery. He and Boris Johnson are a mayoral mutual appreciation society, regularly exchanging strategic ideas and joking about doing a “job swap”. Rumours also persist that he wants to add the Financial Times to his business-information empire.

This, the scale of the new HQ and the imminent end of his New York mayoral career on January 1 next year, have prompted media reports that Bloomberg really might decamp from the Big Apple to the Big Smoke.

HIS office isn’t telling. “Thanks for reaching out,” says a City Hall spokesman from Manhattan, “but we will have to pass on this one.” Understandable. It wouldn’t do for New Yorkers to know their mayor’s eye was roving, I guess. Hell hath no fury like a metropolis scorned.

“Well, he’s certainly got the building for it, hasn’t he?” says networking queen Julia Hobsbawm when asked about the relocation. “In America London is seen as a hub city.” Hobsbawm’s company Editorial Intelligence recently co-hosted a conference on London, in London, with Bloomberg’s company, and in her former incarnation as a public relations executive she forged his 1997 bridgehead into the capital.

“He absolutely loved London when he was here but he is fundamentally a New Yorker,” says Hobsbawm. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the second place he chose to base himself was London. He was hugely interested in a wide range of people in politics, the arts and business, so it would be a good fit.”

There are other synergies. For all his estimated $25 billion personal fortune, Bloomberg is a pragmatist who would sit well in this most pragmatic of cities. The Jewish-Bostonian descendant of immigrants, he is a lifelong Democrat who nonetheless won the mayoralty as a Republican, a social liberal who is pro-choice in the abortion debate and in favour of same-sex marriage and gun control. He opposes the death penalty and supports stem cell research, and once cycled through Manhattan on a mountain bike to show how commuters could beat a transport strike.

And he is an Anglophile, with a taste for Regency style. The interior of his £20 million house in Cadogan Square is described as “very classic” by one visitor (the one planned American touch, a massive air-conditioning system, was kiboshed by neighbours). According to the New York Times, Bloomberg is a fan of Foyle’s War, especially the performance of the actress Honeysuckle Weeks, but he went off her after finding — having invited her to a dinner at Le Gavroche, alongside George Osborne, no less — that she smoked. His ex-wife, Susan, the mother of his two daughters, was born in Yorkshire. But for a man whose chief interests are business, politics, the arts and philanthropy, the only place to be is London.

Bloomberg has assiduously courted the capital’s great and good since that first PR blitz in 1997. The following year he moved on to the rock/racing/royalty set, sponsoring a race at Royal Ascot and flying guests to his private box in a helicopter. He has also schmoozed Londoners on his home turf — British actress Emma Thompson helped him launch an art installation in Washington Square Park in November 2009; the following summer it was Prince Harry’s turn to be gladhanded at a polo match on Governors Island and the next month Bloomberg treated David Cameron to a hotdog outside Penn Station. Shortly afterwards he began his long association with the Old Vic.

Impresario Sally Greene bought the Waterloo theatre with her property magnate husband Robert Bourne and appointed Kevin Spacey as artistic director in 2003. “Michael is all about the four Cs,” says Greene, “he’s cultured, cultivated, civilised and charming. I invited him onto the board of the Old Vic when Kevin and I took it over.”

But will Bloomberg really let London take precedence over his houses on the Upper East Side (home to the labradors, Bonnie and Clyde, that his partner, New York state banking superintendent Diana Taylor gave him as a Christmas present) and in Bermuda? “I can’t imagine it because he is such a New Yorker,” says Greene. “Perhaps he wants to live in both places.”